Why Cruise Ships DON'T Sink

Hundreds of cruise ships confounded the news media this week by NOT sinking, highlighting a growing trend in the cruise industry of producing vessels that are safe, secure and, above all, fun to travel on.

OK, I’m being a touch frivolous with a serious issue, but the general public could be forgiven recently in light of the media’s rush to ‘celebrate’ the 100-year-old tragedy of the Titanic for thinking cruising has somehow become an inherently dangerous holiday choice.

Sadly, though, TV programmes like this week’s ‘Why Ships Sink’ on Channel 4 paint a massively distorted picture of reality and it is worth highlighting the facts rather than the fiction:

• Each week, some 300 ships set sail worldwide, carrying roughly 310,000 passengers.
• More than 16 million people took a cruise in 2011. No ships sank. 
• The only modern ship to sink in the past 10 years is Costa Concordia – due to a calamitous error by her captain, not a safety oversight. 
• From 1997-2010, there were 380 plane crashes worldwide, resulting in almost 6,000 deaths.

I’m not pointing fingers at the airline industry here. Everyone has accidents and human error is a part of everyday life. In fact, for the mutli-millions of people carried every year, the safety record of the airline business is remarkable. But it is still several points worse than the cruise industry.

That’s why I feel compelled to offer some balance and perspective to the current debate. Or, more simply, what Channel 4 peddled as a 'documentary' was just more scurrilous garbage posing as 'news' coverage.

The Titanic WAS 100 years ago, folks, and a lot of lessons have been learned since then. Cruise ships are inherently safe, and, while nobody is saying they are foolproof (NB: for the record, no-one at White Star Line or Harland and Wolff shipyard EVER said their ship was 'unsinkable'), they are certainly not the death-traps that Channel 4 and others would have you believe.

Can they be safer? Of course, and one-off incidents like Concordia will ensure that is the case. But for supposed news media to suggest otherwise is just muck-raking (or ambulance-chasing) of the worst kind.

PS: to answer the question, Why Ships Don't Sink: because they are incredibly well-engineered by high-tech modern designers using design processes and state-of-the-art computer programmes that take advantage of marine architecture progress over the last 50 years. If they were really putting out shoddy work, we'd have known about it years ago.

Time Spent at Sea has moved and can now be found at World of Cruising. You can follow World of Cruising on Twitter and Facebook for the very latest in cruise news.

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Follow Us At The World's Biggest Cruise Convention

Next week sees the annual gathering of the great and good in the cruise industry, Cruise Shipping Miami, where the world comes together to discuss all things maritime in passenger shipping.

And we will be there to bring you all the news and view, 'live' via our Time Spent at Sea blog.

Cruise Shipping Miami is a chance to hear all the main lines discuss the last 12 months in the industry and the coming months ahead, which could be especially insightful in light of the recent Costa Concordia disaster.

There are also regular press conferences by many cruise destinations around the world and a huge Exhibition Hall, featuring cruise ship manufacturers, suppliers, US Coast Guard and support industries, as well as a huge section devoted to ports of call, cruise regions and tourist boards for those areas.

It all adds up to a smorgasbord of cruise people and events, all set against the backdrop of South Beach, Miami, and one of the busiest ports in the world.

It promises to be a milestone occasion in 2012 for anyone even vaguely interested in cruising, so be sure to bookmark us and come back regularly next week!

Time Spent at Sea has moved and can now be found at World of Cruising. You can follow World of Cruising on Twitter and Facebook for the very latest in cruise news.

If you haven't already, subscribe to the World of Cruising magazine today.

The Costa Concordia Tragedy

The news and social media have been bursting with coverage of the tragic Costa Concordia accident on Friday night, when the 114,500-ton vessel hit rocks off the coast of Italy and listed catastrophically, leading to three deaths and another 40 still being classed as 'missing' at the time of writing.

There has been a massive amount of information and mis-reporting in the course of the following 24 hours, with wild speculation and, frankly, some out-and-out ignorant news reports from the supposed mainstream media. The rush to judgement (and sensationalism) is all too familiar.

Our hearts and prayers go out to the victims of the incident and the thousands of survivors who are still trying to deal with the aftermath. Several dozen were injured in the chaos and a handful are severely so. They should also be foremost in the authorites' minds right now.

But, brushing aside the torrent of witless coverage, what can we learn and, more importantly, what does the cruise industry need to learn about the events off the island of Giglio on Friday night? At face value it is inconceivable a modern, large passenger ship should have got into this kind of difficulty. Contemporary thinking says that the fact they are so large is their chief safety feature. Yet, if that is not the case, what conclusions should we draw?

First of all, let's decide what the incident wasn't before we assess what it was. This wasn't the Titanic tragedy and it wasn't an indictment of the cruise industry. It wasn't a systemic failure of any kind and, while the loss of life is sad beyond words, it wasn't the kind that merits bringing out the list of great maritime disasters.

Reports of "women and children first" at the lifeboats just don't ring true but obviously need investigating. It is just one of many, many facets of how the crew handled the emergency that need to be put under the spotlight. And they will.

But let's not bury the cruise industry as somehow completely careless of passenger safety. Thousands of people survived this incident and some comments of "it's lucky the ship was so close to land" completely miss the point. It was because the ship was so close to land that caused the problem in the first place. If it had ben further out to sea, nothing would have happened.

So, what was it, and what questions need to be answered?

First off, the authorities need a full and frank account from Captain Francesco Schettino, one of the two senior officers arrested on Saturday night. This was a regular, weekly route for the ship but many maritime observers are concerned the course took the ship between Giglio and the mainland. Was this regular practice or was the Captain cutting corners in order to save fuel?

That is question No 1 for the inquiry. No 2 is why no distress call was issued after hitting the reef. The evcuation was already under way before coastal authorities were notified and even the crew on board seemed to down-play the severity of things in the first hour or so. Again, the captain comes under scrutiny as this would have been his call.

The lack of coherent and consistent announcements also seems to have been another problem on board and this IS a worry for ships with multi-national passenger lists. Was most of the announcing done in Italian - as has been reported - and why were the British, American, German and other nationalities so badly informed about events?

Some reports also indicate a few of the lifeboats malfunctioned or the crew in charge did not handle the equipment well, and this is another key area the inquiry must probe.

However, the big issues remain, and they are twofold - first, did the sheer number of passengers involved cause a problem. If that is the case, every major cruise line will have to re-evaluate their safety drills and procedures. Have any of them actually performed an evacuation at sea with 3,000-plus passengers and, if not, why not?

You can be sure the U.S. Coastguard in particular will be paying close attention and all American-ported cuise ships will be asked this question in the days ahead.

Secondly, and perhaps the biggest issue of all, as the ship began to list, there were clearly major problems with continuing to load and use the lifeboats. The starboard side, which ended up completely under water, is a particular concern. The key question here is, is this an over-looked logistical problem or was the Concordia lifeboat drill just badly botched?

In theory, a ship should never sink or list so quickly as to make lowering lifeboats impossible, so the maritime safety folks will be looking at this in great detail. It is therefore vital the Italian authorities quiz every one of the crew on lifeboat duty and get the truth of what happened on Friday night.

But, the bottom line remains this:

The cruise industry has a safety record which is the envy of all other modes of transportation; for the millions who cruise every year, it is not even likely to be an issue; and there is no reason to suggest this sounds the 'death knell' for the cruise industry (as several media outlets have speculated to a head-scratching degree).

If anything, this will actually make the industry safer and more conscious of the issues involved. So let's not rush to say the Costa Concordia is something which it isn't. And, for once, let's have a responsible approach from the media and a reporting of the facts - not the fiction.

Simon Veness

Time Spent at Sea has moved and can now be found at World of Cruising. You can follow World of Cruising on Twitter and Facebook for the very latest in cruise news.

If you haven't already, subscribe to the World of Cruising magazine today.